Classic Creepy Comics - Ghostly Weird Stories & Blue Bolt Tales of Terror

Welcome to the fourth year of Classic Creepy Comics where I talk about horror comics from the pre-code days. Most of the books I'll be talking about are public domain and available for free at Comic Book+. You can read them online or, if you create a free account, you can download them. I'll have direct links at the end.

As I was digitally digging through the horror books, the covers and art for this one grabbed my attention. I love everything about this! The gruesome monster, the slime dripping font on The Thing from the Void. So good!

Ghostly Weird Tales (rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?) was released by Star Publications from September 1953 to September 1954. The company went under shortly after this time due to the outcry from the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that convinced some people that comics were a bad influence on kids. Can you imagine?!

 

The origins of the book go all the way back to 1940 when it was a completely different comic. It featured the superhero Blue Bolt and was one of the first titles to use a single characters name.

  The book featured other heroes like Sub-Zero (shoots ice beams), Page Parks Air Hostess (really?), Runaway Ronson Stream Engineer (what?), and...Sergeant Spook?! I had to look into one of Spook's adventures to see what his deal was.

 

 

When the comic stands started getting overtaken by horror, Blue Bolt became Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror (another mouthful) in 1951, continuing the numbering with issue #112. The very next issue, the title was shortened to Blue Bolt Weird Tales. It only ran for seven issues before becoming Ghostly Weird Stories.

I have to wonder sometimes if kids of the era would spend their hard earned paper route/lawn mowing money on these and then have to hide them under their mattress so their parents wouldn't take them away. I mean, look at this nightmare fuel!

Here's where you can read the books: Blue Bolt Tales of Terror, Ghostly Weird Tales.

I know it's October and we're all about the spooky but I'd also recommend giving the first Blue Bolt story a look. Being from 1940, it's an oddly fun story that I could see getting made into a low budget B-movie.

Don't forget to visit the other Countdown to Halloween sites!

You can find a list at the link below.